1. Field of the Invention
The specification relates to a system and method for sharing documents and markup to documents in near real-time. In particular, the specification relates to a server for communicating with client devices and a protocol for sharing documents and markups fairly to each of the client devices.
2. Description of the Background Art
Network connections to a server may vary in speed and quality. Problems may arise when users with connections of various speeds are connected to a collaborative session, such as a web conference. As a result, it may be confusing to users if those with high bandwidth and low bandwidth connections see different things. For example, a user with low bandwidth may receive and see a page of a document later than other users or may not see marks other users have added to pages of the document.
For example, when a business organizes a meeting in a conference room, some employees use mobile devices, the room may include a projector for projecting slides and other users connect to the meeting remotely using their laptops and/or other mobile devices. The remote users can employ conferencing software to view the slides and marks in real-time, however the variation in bandwidth may result in viewers seeing different things at different times. Therefore, a system and method for fairly adding documents to a collaborative session is needed.